


I. The Burial of the Dead

by EnglishLanguage



Series: Vers Libre [1]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Caffeine Addiction, Child Neglect, Custody Arrangements, Developing Friendships, Everyone's constantly tired in this fic, Foreshadowing, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kevin is tired, Moral Dilemmas, Parenthood, Tron is tired, Unreliable Narrator, a little bit of corporate politics, don't tell me Alan doesn't have one, mentions of program biology, the Grid has got Problems, yes I actually analyzed the poem I have a whole google doc to prove it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishLanguage/pseuds/EnglishLanguage
Summary: The life and death of Kevin Flynn were foreshadowed by a series of conversations.Based off of "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot





	1. Sosostris

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a rewrite of Exposition, now with 100% more programs and a series of other works to go with it.
> 
> I hesitated to post this without having part 2 of the series finished, but AO3 only saves your unposted stuff for a limited amount of time, so I had to do something XD
> 
> CyberSearcher, please accept my unending gratitude- you are an excellent beta reader.

* * *

_“Here, said she,_

_Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor…”_

_\- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"_

“You used to smile,” Kevin says to her, thinking of a huge grin, bright like a lithium flame. “When we first met- what happened to you, man?"

The program beside him frowns in response, a thin grimace stabbing like a splinter through her face. Kevin doesn’t miss how her hands tighten, fingers stiff and crooked as talons, against the edge of the wall she sits on. 

“Your boyfriend is rubbing off on you, Yori. You look exactly like h-”

Yori hisses through her teeth, eyes flashing so dark that the color of her irises seems less influenced by Lora's coding, more _blackened_ by the deep, bruised tones of angry fire. And Kevin knows better- _most_ of the time- than to mess with fire. “Sorry,” he backtracks. "I'm- yeah, sorry."

Yori, like Lora, is made up of hidden teeth and the ambition with which to use them, so it’s not the most genius thing Kevin’s ever done to insult her (taciturn, dour) boyfriend.

“Don’t apologize,” she replies dryly. “I’m _happy_ to look like Tron.”

“Oh. Right on.”

Yori kicks one foot in the air, almost spasmodically, and the helmet nestled on her lap tips on its side; she catches it with both hands, grip still rigid.

As always, when Kevin’s attention is directed to the helmet, his eyes flick right up to Yori’s hair. Which she- a computer program- does have. Wreathed around her head in a crown of braids, her hair is an inch or two shorter than Lora’s and _probably_ the same hue of gold. It’s difficult to distinguish between colors in the swamp of psychedelic halflight that makes up ENCOM’s computer system. 

“Do you want to know why it’s hard to smile?”

Her offer to talk surprises Kevin. “Sure. Gimme the skinny on it.”

“It wasn’t the war that ruined me,” Yori opens, which- leaves Kevin drawing a blank. Which war? Is she _quoting_ something? “I was a drone for too long; couldn’t think, couldn’t feel…” She snorts, tracing thumbs over the deactivated circuits on the sides of her helmet. “In my mind, the war seemed to pass in the pulse of a circuit, a nanosecond. When Tron woke me up, my internal clock had logged a whole _cycle_ I had no memory of. But we were victorious, when you met me, so I smiled anyway.”

“Hang on. What war?” It’s possible he missed something- Kevin casts his mind back, trying to come up with memories of armies, of real combat. Sark had soldiers, definitely; Kevin, on the other hand, had a couple programs who were annoyed enough at the MCP to finally get on their feet and do something about it. There was death, sure. Too many programs were forced into the MCP’s sick games, and Kevin can still remember the disbelief on Crom's face as he fell…

Mr. Henderson never came to save his program.

But Kevin never witnessed a war. “You mean the fights? On the Game Grid?”

Yori shoots him a wry look. “It doesn’t matter, Flynn,” she finally decides, though Kevin is still curious and doesn’t agree. “The war didn’t break me; it's the- the _waste_ that came after that did. This is a glitched system; this is _Outlands._ And there are only two things I can do: I can sit here, and I can stare, while I wait for the users to put it all back together.”

Yori’s head dips forward and a strand of hair, anchored behind her ear, falls into her face. “That’s why I can’t bring myself to smile.”

  
Kevin respects the brief silence that falls between them for a moment before clearing his throat. “I hate to break it to you,” he says slowly, “but users have- huh. Users have a _different_ definition of war than you programs.”

The World Wars, Vietnam; heck, even the most ancient battles of history- _that’s_ what Kevin’s talking about. Real, unglorified carnage. Combat on a scale that makes it into the textbooks. 

“The MCP was nothing, Yori; he was small. Your system isn’t waste, either…”

Frozen in a state of perpetual sunset, the deep black heavens of the system melt into the inferno of crimson and yellow that spans the horizon. Before Kevin’s eyes, a plain of silver earth rolls in dips and hills; grey spheres like moons, each the size of a large building, float- _float!-_ a couple miles off the ground. Rivers of neon circuits snake over the ground, each stripe lit with light and life. 

This system is a beauty.

“We protected this place, Yori,” Kevin praises. _Cheer up, man._ “Good always conquers evil. You know." Warm with satisfaction, Kevin gives the top of the wall he's sitting on a soft pat of approval. 

“Don’t you believe we have a little of both in us?” Yori asks. “Good and evil?”

Kevin rolls his eyes, hoping that programs understand a solid gesture of ‘don’t give me that crap’ when they see it. “Listen, sweetheart- I distrusted someone once.”

 _“Once.”_ She shakes her head. “Who?”

“Dude named Dillinger. Sark’s user." If Yori recoils at the mention of Sark, Kevin's eyes are carefully averted and he doesn't notice. Just for the record. "Dillinger was an outclassed coward, a real piece of work. If someone gave him a birthday present, he’d sell it for profit. If he walked into an art museum, he’d look for price tags.”

Yori’s circuits pulse with light. “I don’t understand those statements.”

 _“It doesn’t matter,”_ dismisses Kevin, a little bitter. “When he was done with me, Yori, I had nothing left to give him.”

He remembers learning that Dillinger had stolen everything from him. Disbelief, rage, whatever- _pure destruction_ had churned in his stomach, had clung stickily to the underside of his tongue. He remembers being _Kevin Flynn,_ a jackpot of unearthed potential, genius, color, and fighting spirit… and he remembers being useless. “Dillinger burned me out, man, and I was furious about it. I couldn’t bring myself to trust anyone, to love anything, for a while that. It was awful.”

Yori tips her chin in a gentle nod.

“I’m better now,” Kevin explains, “but I’ve learned that you gotta try and see the light in everything, or you’ll tear yourself apart. If you’re ever in a situation where someone hurts you that badly- smile through it. Cool?”

And Yori does smile.

But it’s polite, nothing like her trademark, lilting smirk, and doesn’t reach her tired eyes. 

“Dead things,” she muses, laying down words like she’s constructing a gallows, “Don’t tend to stay that way.”

“Did Tron teach you that? I don’t even see how that’s a relevant point.”

“Quiet. Let me tell you what programs believe about creation and deletion.” Yori watches the circuits on her hands flicker with studious eyes, avoiding Kevin’s stare. “All programs are compiled from the code of the system, and we return to the code of the system when we derez.” Briefly, she touches fingertips to her chest, where a user’s heart would be. “Programs are deleted often, when their users no longer need them.”

 _People,_ Kevin thinks. Programs are _people._ How many programs has he effectively killed throughout his career?

“But the Tower Guardians teach that we are all connected to the system, part of a whole, and we never truly lose contact with a program that has been derezzed. Their data still exists in the system, in a different form.

“Your problems, Flynn, never lose contact with you. When you kill them, they simply take on a different face.”

* * *

“By the way,” Kevin risks saying, Yori's air of quiet agitation dragging against his words like wind. He wonders if she can actually hear his voice through the metaphorical gale. “Where _is_ Tron?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about your friends? You were alone when I found you."

“Gone,” Yori responds, shrugging- but her shoulders hunch up to her ears and never come back down.

“Somewhere else?” Kevin infers. It makes sense. “Takes time to get your life back together after the MCP. I’ll- uh, I’ll let you get back to them; is that alright?”

Yori’s smile pulls into a grimace. “It’s alright.” She turns to him, gaze hollow. “Go back to your world, Flynn.”  
  


_“And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,_

_Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,_

_Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find_

_The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _


	2. The First Problem

_“And I will show you something different from either_

_Your shadow at morning striding behind you_

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;_

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _

“I’ve got a _hot_ date,” Kevin opens. 

And irritation oozes off of Alan Bradley in _rivers,_ like someone dumped a bucket of liquefied aggravation over his perfectly combed head. “A date, Kevin?”

“Mhm.”

“What’s her name? Where’s she from?”

“Name is Jordana Canas, but she said I can call her Jordan.” Kevin raises a finger, mentally checks off box number one. “She’s half-something-South-American.” And that’s box number two. 

“Career?” Alan interrogates, examining a bruise on the back of his hand. 

"Works at a bar.”

“Well, which one?”

The name forms on Kevin’s tongue before he can stop it. His voice grunts to a halt, and Alan raises _both_ eyebrows. “I plead the Fifth?” Kevin tries, buffing the back of his neck with a hand. There’s a sharp ache wringing the life out of the muscles back there, and he’s pretty sure he can credit at least half of that pain to the constant, nagging presence of a certain colleague…

“By which you mean,” Alan accuses, every word dragged out for slow torture, “The bar in the shady part of town I keep telling you to avoid. Right. Does she live around there?”

It’s… a good question, and not one that Kevin had considered. “I dunno.” He acquiesces chagrin with a tilted nod; how is he supposed to keep in touch with her if he doesn’t know where to find Jordan outside the bar? He’s sure they connected during their conversation, nothing phony, and it’s not likely she’ll just abandon him after that. “I mean- Chill, Alan,” he blusters. “She’s cool. I don’t need to know where she lives.”

“That’s better than last time, Flynn; you know her last name and everything.”

“Come on. Just because you can swing it with Lora does _not_ mean everyone hits a home run on their first date.” Agitated, Kevin punctuates the statement with a curse.

Bradley recoils, almost disturbed, and it’s a pity Kevin doesn’t know whether it was the lewd slang, the fact that Lora was implicated in it, or the cussing that put him off. In a situation like this, Kevin would gladly weaponize any advantage he has over Alan’s straitlaced sensibilities. 

“I’m not criticizing you for not going home with her,” Alan clarifies. “Heavens forbid. I’m just saying you should keep a closer eye on who you’re dating-”

“I don’t need to hear this, Alan.”

Bradley reacts, as he always does, with his passive-aggressive shtick; he even gives up on looming into Kevin’s face in favor of sitting clear back in his chair, wide-eyed and dubious. It’s an invitation for Kevin to advance with his- as Alan has dubbed it- ‘belligerence.’ It’s also a trap. A minefield. When Alan Bradley lets Kevin get away with anything, it’s because the programmer wants to see Kevin mess up. 

Usually, Alan does it to make a point.

Kevin treads warily. “This isn’t a drunk thing… don’t look at me like that, it’s not! I actually talked with this girl. She’s awesome, man; I think this relationship?” He gestures a circle in midair, and the circle includes him and Jordan and not Alan. “It's gonna go places.”

“This relationship that you started in a drug den in the worst part of the city. Of course.” Alan throws up his hands, and even that gesture is restrained. “All I’m saying is, I’m not going to drag your dead body out of some alley when she or one of her friends decides to bash in your head.” He sucks in a breath for what’s going to be either a massive sigh or a continued lecture-

 _“Pfft.”_ Kevin cuts him short, ends up spitting all over his chin. “No duh, I don’t want you to drag me outta anywhere. Why do you always butt into my private life like this? I mean-”

“How’s her economic status?”

“- It’s rude, and annoying, and not your business.”

“Answer me, Kevin.”

He only obliges because Alan’s got the bridge of his nose perched between two fingers, seconds away from an aneurysm. It won’t do ENCOM any good if one of the company’s best programmers comes down with a rabid headache. 

“Her ‘economic status’ is not the best. Girl deserves some privacy, though, so that’s all you get to know.”

“Kevin, you’re blatantly wealthy. You don’t see a problem with that?” 

His stomach tosses with hot frustration. “Like what?”

“She could be using you for money,” Alan deadpans.

Kevin spews out the stuttered beginnings of a retort- _Not everything’s about money, Bradley; have you been made aware of that?-_ and Alan, with one hand, flicks a nonverbal command to _shut up._ Without any consent from his functional brain, Kevin’s words strangle themselves to death in his throat.

What part of him went ahead and decided Alan is scary enough to obey, anyway?

“On the other hand,” Alan allows, “Maybe not. She could be a perfectly nice person. But she’s living in poverty, working in _that_ bar, and may have a number of problems that you wouldn’t know how to recognize, let alone deal with! How can you trust people so easily after that whole mess with Dillinger?”

Alan’s hands tremble. 

He needs, Kevin recognizes, caffeine; Alan doesn’t settle well without it. 

He’s always twitchy and tired on withdrawal, unable to tolerate people- just a minute ago, Kevin would have called him rigid and labeled his feelings toward Alan as ‘slight contempt.’ Now, he notices Alan’s raw suspicion and feels only pity. Man, during that whole Dillinger fiasco, Kevin was angry like an infection. He remembers fury shredding up his gut, leaking into every inch of him until he couldn’t look at anyone or anything with the barest hint of positivity. 

It hurt.

He doesn’t have it in him to hate people and distrust them to such a _destructive_ extent. 

“So- you’re not going to let me do this?” He asks, avoiding Alan’s last question.

“Hn?” Great. Now Bradley’s broken, blinking in shock like a skipping record. “No, not at all. You’re a matur… you’re an adult, Kevin. You can make your own decisions. Just…”

“What?”

“Look out for yourself. I’m trying to protect you.”

Nerdy and built like a stick, Alan Bradley doesn’t have a physical skill in his body to back up that statement, but Kevin finds something uncannily _correct_ in the claim. His brain stumbles through a double-take, trying to see irradiant blue eyes and broad, armored shoulders where there are only grey eyes glaring and the rumpled tie-and-collar of a suit. “It’s insane, Alan, you act exactly like…”

“Like who?”

“Never mind.”

  
:::

“You are so _selfish,_ Kevin!” 

“I can’t help you,” Kevin tells Jordan.

_I can’t I can’t I can’t_

:::

“Alan.” 

There’s the sleek handle of a phone in Kevin’s hand, and a coating of even sleeker sweat; the tighter he holds, the harder the machine fights to slip from his hand.

“Yes? Kevin?”

 _“Alan,”_ Kevin says, and chokes on it. “Alan, I…”

It’s just over the telephone. He’s not even looking at Bradley, so he might as well not be talking to anyone right now. Maybe he’s talking to the wall. Maybe to the thin air. There’s no reason to be shy.

“Something happened, man,” he forces out.

“What?”

“I broke up with Jordan.”

He suffers through Alan’s hesitant pause, only breathing again once Alan sucks a noisy breath in through his teeth- “Not to be offensive, Kevin, but you’ve never called me about something like this.”

“Because something like this has never happened to me! She-” A scrap of a phone number on the bedside table, late-night footsteps through the front door (and Kevin had _sighed_ in relief that she came home safe), and in the drawers, under a stack of shirts… “She was on drugs, okay?”

Alan pauses again, because tactful concern, whenever Alan really means it, always makes him slow. But Kevin’s heart spasms at a hundred miles per hour, pumping rapid pain and confusion into Kevin’s blood, up to his throat and into his words. The world spins at the speed of light around him, and Alan can’t keep up.

“What? _What,_ Alan; what aren’t you saying…”

“I understand why you’re worried, Kevin.” He clicks his tongue, and a faint tsking noise feeds through the phone. “But are you really one to judge?”

The drugs and Jordan and the uncertainty and now Alan…

Kevin is going to punch the wall, right here and now, and then he’s going to drive over to Alan’s place and punch Alan, too.

“Listen here, man. She wasn’t doing some stupid college-kid stuff, you got that? I’d recognize plain stupid, and this was not… it wasn’t…” He spins in place, winding the telephone cord around his legs and tangling fingers in his hair. “She was in the business or something, doing hard drugs, messing around with people I can't get involved with."

“Breathe, Kevin,” Bradley murmurs.

“Tangled up in back-alley who-knows-what and she didn’t say a thing…”

“Kevin?”

“Ch. Let me finish, or so help me…” He’s got a house, now, a whole _company,_ a place and a purpose in the world. Kevin’s opened his eyes, he’s seen the good, and he doesn’t want to go back to where he was before.

In college, when Dillinger canned him- Kevin was a _misfit._

And all his friends were fourteen years old.

“I kicked her out, okay?” He isn’t asking Alan for advice on what to do. “You were right about her all along; that’s radical, pal.”

“I didn’t want to be right,” Alan says softly.

“Funny, Bradley. But it’s all fine.” Nothing is fine. Kevin’s entire body is twitching with frustration, so if he doesn't go scream in a pillow right now, he’ll probably drunk-stumble outside and gut the first person he sees with a cafeteria spork. 

“I trusted her, alright? I really did. Like a moron. Turns out, I don’t want to get mixed up with her crowd- I don’t want ENCOM to get mixed up with her. That’s responsible, right?” _Are you proud of me yet, Alan?_

“Sure, Kevin.”

“You don’t sound sure,” he counters. His anger limps to a slow halt, gone with the rest of his energy. Without so much as a pretense of dignity, Kevin slides down the wall and tries to remember who he was before Jordan.

“It’s not that at all, Kevin. That’s…” Alan backs off from his end of the call for a second- Kevin hears muffled swearing, probably smothered in the crook of Alan’s elbow. They aren’t especially impressive cuss words, though, so why Alan bothers to try and hide them is beyond Kevin’s understanding. “That’s good, Kevin. You did really good, alright? It’s just that these things aren’t black and white.”

“ _How-”_ And the word escapes him in a sob- “How not?”

“Jordan was in a bad place,” Alan explains- for once, Kevin can’t hear the ‘toldja so’ in his voice. “She needed help. You can’t just…” 

Alan sighs, uprooting a harsh exhale from the depths of his chest. His words spill out of him in a dry rush, a landslide- “You can’t just give up on people when they’re inconvenient, Flynn. I thought the two of you were serious, and now? It’s just not going to end well for her.”

His opinion stings. 

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about a girlfriend of mine,” Kevin blusters on. “Was she growin’ on you or something?”

“Ke-”

“Whatever. She was growing on me, too. And yes, I was going to make it permanent, Alan. Not soon, but I could see it happening in the future…” Kevin had seen it _so clearly._ His last few words crack into a whisper. “I coulda had a kid with her. Can you imagine how bad that would have been? She was messed up, on drugs, and I would’ve gone and had a _kid_ with her.”

  
:::

“You are so _selfish,_ Kevin!”

Her eyes and cheeks are stained with swollen red.

“I can’t help you,” Kevin tells Jordan.

Kevin Flynn trusts in everything. (Kevin Flynn doesn’t trust Jordan Canas. He makes a graveyard for his dreams, buries them deep to forget.)

_“‘You gave my hyacinths first a year ago;_

_They called me the hyacinth girl.’”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _

The lady on the phone calls to inform him of the death of Jordana Luiza Canas. 

Kevin tries _not_ to have seen that coming.

“What happened?” Sighing, Kevin raises a hand to his forehead, scrubs the scowl off his face.

“A car accident, Mr. Flynn. She was driving under the influence; unfortunately…”

“Okay,” Kevin cuts her off. “Okay- I get it.”

“The details of the incident,” the lady drones, “are not at my liberty to disclose to you at this time. Are you aware that, in her will, Ms. Canas listed you as the guardian for her child?”

“Yes,” Kevin replies, not listening.

“Good. She specified that you, Mr. Flynn, are the biological father of Samuel Canas-” At which point, Kevin’s brain snaps to attention with a rattled sense of _wait, what?-_ “who is currently in the custody of the emergency personnel sent to Ms. Canas' home.”

Kevin hangs up on her, sets the phone down to greet a world bloated with stiff, unnatural silence. His heartbeat pounds in his head, a vibration without the noise, a headache without the pain, right behind each ear- 

_Yeah, behind the ears; you_ just _missed ‘em, pal, so now I can’t hear a thing-_

He unhooks the phone again, and the slight click of ceramic on ceramic pops the bubble around him.

“Alan, you better check your answering machine,” Kevin hears himself say. “I might have a son, and I need you.”

:::

Alan sits Kevin down, then nestles a cup of coffee in his uncooperative hand.

“This the hospital bunk kind of coffee?” Kevin asks, giving the foam-brown liquid an obligatory side-eye.

“Hospital bunk,” Alan confirms, and he collapses into his own chair with a rough groan. It’s four-something in the morning, feels more like they’re waiting in the maternity ward than the PICU.

“The results are in from the lab. Paternity test and all that.” Kevin tries to dangle the statement like bait in front of the other man’s face, which Bradley absolutely _hates,_ but he’s too tired and too grim to swing it. Alan’s eyes are narrowed, cat-lazy, and he doesn’t try to get anything more out of Kevin.

“Hm.”

“Do you wanna be the godfather?” Kevin asks. “Or just the weird uncle?”

“Good heavens, Flynn, you have a _kid.”_

“Just spiffy, isn’t it?” He holds his coffee right below his nose, trying to inhale the reeking caffeine so he doesn’t have to drink it. “They let me in to see him,” Kevin continues, more solemnly. “He’s pretty cute. Mop-haired, big, blue eyes…” He clenches his fist, crushing cheap styrofoam between fingers. “Scrawny…”

“Scrawny,” Alan repeats, drawing out the word. “Is it bad?”

“Yeah.” The kid had glared up at Kevin with a face unlike any kid he’s ever seen, dark exhaustion under his eyes like smudged make-up, lips coated with chapped, bloody skin, scrapes and bruises all across his jaw.

Forget _scrawny-_ Samuel is gaunt. The kid’s cheeks are sunken in, jaundiced in color. He looks too-young, too-old, worn-out, and _sickly._

His name, Samuel, definitely fits the ramshackle, runaway look on the kid. But it doesn’t fit the mass of feathery, brunet curls that sit in a puff on his head like a soft halo. It doesn’t fit the fragile size of his body, curled up under hospital sheets, or the nervous vulnerability of his skinny, shaking hands. Kevin’s already fond of him, after an hour’s visit, and his brain adamantly insists that the kid looks _kinda like a Sam._

“They- the cops- when they came to Jordan’s house, they found the kid playing in a dumpster in an alleyway, ” Kevin says, watching Alan’s brows furrow. “The house, apparently, wasn’t much better than a dumpster. He’s underfed, malnourished-”

“Neglect?” Alan asks.

“Without a doubt. One of the nurses told me they’re looking for other signs of abuse, too. But they don’t know yet.” He forces himself to taste the coffee and finds he doesn’t mind the sour so much when he hasn’t eaten in almost a day.

The temperature of the drink is something else entirely. Kevin grunts as the lava goes down, then works the scalded, sandpaper tip of his tongue against his teeth.

“You’re going to help him,” Alan says, but it’s not a statement. It’s a question.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Of course.” Alan’s expression clears, and Kevin predicts a change of subject in the sudden, sideways tilt of Alan’s head. 

“When Jet was born,” Bradley muses, “Lora and I- well, we were out of our depth. The material responsibilities were difficult, yes, but the _emotional_ responsibilities blindsided us completely.” He closes his eyes, and Kevin wonders if Alan is aware of the small smile that parts his lips. “I’d always thought parents raised their children as legacies, as… shadows of oneself, I suppose. I was wrong. I love Jethro more than anything else in my life; compared to him, I’m nothing. And how is _nothing_ supposed to raise and protect the most precious person in its life?”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“It is.” Alan opens his eyes again, glancing down the hall. Kevin follows his gaze all the way to the heavy, wood door behind which Sam sleeps. “You’re going to learn, very quickly, that what you want plays second fiddle to what your child wants. Samuel’s problems are your problems now, regardless of how convenient that is for you.” 

Alan’s too smart not to realize how he’s almost echoing his words from a few years ago, back when Kevin and Jordan…

“I know,” Kevin accepts, and he _does_ know.

“There’s no way of predicting what Samuel’s going to need from you,” Alan sighs, pulling off his glasses. He wipes the lenses on his sleeve. “You’ll have to be understanding, selfless…”

“I can do that.” Kevin passes his coffee along to Alan, who looks like he needs the boost far more than Kevin does. “I’m gonna give that kid the best childhood he could ask for. It’s all going to work out fine, Bradley.”

_“...I was neither_

_Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,_

_Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _


	3. The Second Problem

_“April is the cruellest month, breeding_

_Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing_

_Memory and desire, stirring_

_Dull roots with spring rain.”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _

Kevin knows he’s earned Alan’s friendship the second Alan starts criticizing him to his face.

“You’re gullible.”

“This is about Dillinger again,” Kevin guesses. 

“Not specifically, no.” Alan tugs his overcoat off the back of his chair, and Kevin wonders at that it’s  _ customary  _ for Dr. Alan Bradley to exchange flak instead of goodbyes. 

“Why, yes, that  _ was  _ a productive meeting, Kevin,” Kevin mutters to himself, drumming a four-beat on the table in front of him. Alan spares him a low scoff.

“The world is fundamentally corrupt,” Bradley advises him. “Everything about business? Even more so. Lora and I  _ philosophized  _ about this topic extensively after Dillinger fired you; she agrees with me, so you’re not allowed to protest the fact.”

Lora lives in Washington, now. If Kevin were to mimic Alan’s specific brand of chronic distrust, he’d accuse the man of claiming Lora’s support while she isn’t here to confirm it. But Kevin has the moral high ground, so he won’t.

“I’m sure,” he states airily, “she has a more nuanced view than you’re willing to admit.”

“Oh, certainly- she has a more nuanced view than both of us, but especially-” Alan jabs a pen in Kevin’s direction, then tucks it in his shirt pocket- “more than you.”

“Dillinger was one man, Alan,” Kevin protests. “One moron. Doesn’t mean everyone’s out to get you. Why’re you bringing this up, anyway?”

“You let the board walk all over you.” Pulling his coat on over his arms, Alan pauses to (hand still caught in the elbow of his sleeve) gesture vaguely around the conference room. “I don’t understand it. Do you not notice? Is something else distracting you? Sam, or- or another priority…”

Kevin automatically winces.

Then he winces again, hoping Alan didn’t pick up on the guilt he’s certain is written in bold script on his forehead.

He thinks he’s gotten good at balancing his time between real life and the Grid; Alan’s frown says something very different.

“Mackey, especially,” Alan continues. Kevin tries to remember Mackey- his face, his ideas, anything- and draws a solid blank. “I have the same misgivings about him as I did about Dillinger, back before I even knew what Dillinger did. I always told Lora I trusted Ed about as far as she could digitize him.”

“Which wouldn’t have been very far,” Kevin supplies, “because they prob’ly hadn’t started testing digitization on organic substances at that point, so Dillinger would’ve dissolved into a pile of gross, right on the floor.”

Alan fixes him with a questioning stare, mouth half-open, the shape of it stuck on whatever he was about to say. “You-” Alan shakes his head, confused. “You’ve read Lora’s notes on the Shiva laser?”

“Yeah,” Kevin admits, then proceeds to blatantly lie. “I’m the CEO, right? I should know about the history of ENCOM’s projects.” 

In truth, he has no interest in overly precise, technological word soup. Just flipping through Lora’s report to Gibbs and the board made him nauseous. Unfortunately, an understanding of the SHV 20905 turned out to be necessary for Kevin to access the Grid. 

“I’m impressed,” Alan allows. 

Kevin sets an elbow on the table and drops his chin on his fist. “Whaddaya want from me, Bradley?”

“Learn to take people with a grain of salt, Sunshine. I covered all my bases long before Dillinger came after me, and I didn’t get fired.” Alan straightens his collar, nods at Kevin, and leaves the room.

_ “Mackey?”  _ Kevin asks himself.  _ Who’s Mackey? _

:::

The man has a face like a bleached wall: papery, faded-pale, and done over with a liberal coating of stiff, matte paint. He’s also completely unfamiliar and making aggressive eye contact with Kevin, which is… a  _ killer  _ combination.  The man definitely knows Kevin, and Kevin knows jack squat.

The social disaster hasn’t happened yet, but Kevin already anticipates a slow and painful death in his future- courtesy of Alan as soon as the dude learns Kevin messed up another CEO thing. 

“Hey man,” he greets, aiming for vagueness. “What’s hanging?”

In reaction, Wall-Face sucks a lemon, shudders like a dog, then resets his facial expression. No surprise there: the hoser totally looks the type to have never spoken casually in his life. 

He sticks his hand out for Kevin to shake, and Kevin lets him have his moment of etiquette.

“Excuse me, Mr. Flynn. I’m Richard Mackey. I don’t assume you know me that well-”

“Hey, you’ve got a firm grip on you! Nice.” Wall-Face Mackey scowls and tries not to look too completely annoyed. To his credit, the man isn’t completely ineffective at hiding his emotions, but he could definitely take lessons from a real guru of stoicism. Specifically, Kevin thinks he’d get along awesome with Alan.

Or Tron, for that matter. In a competition for Least Emotional Being, Tron would  _ tear  _ Mackey apart _. _

“Mackey-” Kevin tosses the name around in his brain. “Nah, I’ve definitely seen you around.” He takes a wild guess. “Are you on the board?”

“That I am, Mr. Flynn.”

Success. 

He takes back everything bad he’s ever said about himself and half of everything Alan’s ever said because Kevin Flynn is the bomb.  “Call me Kevin,” he offers.

“Kevin. It’s only that we on the board don’t often see you at our meetings with the other company executives. I thought it prudent to reintroduce myself, just to be sure.”

Oh, he thought it prudent.

Mackey’s smarminess rubs Kevin the wrong way, and he suddenly remembers that, yeah, he  _ has _ heard of Mackey after all. Alan hates the man, so the two of them actually wouldn’t work well together.

“What I wanted to talk to you about, Kevin, is not really… work-related. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” He gets the sense Mackey doesn’t dabble in a lot of non-work-related business. Chances are this is going to be the only interesting thing Wall-Face has ever said to anyone, and Kevin’s not about to miss out on seeing it.

“Thank you. This is going to sound incredibly intrusive-” Mackey hesitates- “but during your last meeting with the board, you brought up the fact that you were being drawn away from work in your search for a child psychologist for your… son.”

That’d burst anyone’s bubble, but Kevin’s bad mood doesn’t just burst- it shreds itself to pieces against his ribcage, and the debris settles somewhere in his intestines to begin putrefaction in peace. “My son?”

“I have no doubt you’re more than capable of finding a psychologist,” Mackey backtracks. If he weren’t holding a stack of folders, he’d likely have his hands up. “I don’t want to interfere in your affairs. My nephew has been attending therapy for years; I only wanted to mention that I happen to have some excellent recommendations.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Mackey’s face takes on a note of surprise. “If you’d like, I can provide you a list.”

“I’d- I’d like that,” Kevin admits. He hasn’t been able to find anyone able or willing to deal with Sam’s nervousness, or the kid’s constant nightmares. “Absolutely. I’m off for lunch at 12:30.”

‘That’s manageable.” It’s a date, then. “Good day, Mr. Flynn,” Mackey smiles. “I’ll see you then.”

“Back at you, Mr. Mackey.”

:::

Kevin likes to think half his genius exists in his easy ability to make friends.

Contrary to popular belief, the only obstacle that ever stood in the way of Kevin’s friendship with Alan was Alan’s unwillingness to deal with what he referred to as ‘Flynn’s juvenility.’ Kevin disagrees with pessimists, but he has nothing against them.

That obstacle doesn’t exist, for whatever reason, between Kevin and Richard Mackey.

“He’s getting close to you,” Alan comments, a few weeks after Kevin first met Rich.

“Something wrong?”

“You don’t think he’s trying too hard, Kevin?” 

Kevin ignores him.

  
:::

“Sweetie, sometimes you act like a child instead of a grown man,” his mom says- Kevin manages to dodge her for another second; only gives in to a wrinkled kiss on his cheek after craning his neck to see that Rich actually walked through the front door and out of view.

“I know, mom.”

“Richard is a dear, Kev,” she observes. “I’m sure his mother is allowed to show him affection without maiming his pride. You ought to bring him to visit more often.”

“Can’t,” Kevin jokes, “Alan would get jealous.”

“You know he wouldn’t.” Carol leans across him to lock the front door, then catches Kevin by his elbow. “Sit down for a bit, won’t you? You don’t have to leave yet.”

His mom has always had an open soul; she leaves it out for other people to read. Kevin takes one glance at her tight smile and knows she’s been alone with her thoughts too long. His dad developed dementia a couple years ago, and it’s gotten… worse.

‘Worse’ is an insufficient way to describe Mac Flynn’s condition, but Kevin’s gone too weirdly numb to it to think about his dad in any more detail. He sums up reality with two facts: the dementia is worse now, and Sam finds it mildly annoying whenever he has to reteach Mac how to play Clue halfway through the game. 

“So,” Kevin’s mom says, guiding him to the couch. “How are you doing? I haven’t spent enough time with you lately.”

And Kevin doesn’t call nearly often enough. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. We know you’re busy at ENCOM, Kevin. Hopefully you let Alan take care of you?”

“What, did you sic him on me or something?”

“He’s a sensible man.” Her pressed-lips expression of disapproval crumbles the instant Kevin looks into her eyes, which are beautiful as ever, crinkled with laughter along the lines of deep crow’s feet. “You, on the other hand,” she scolds, “are worse than your dad used to be when it comes to getting home at an acceptable time.”

“I’ve gotten better since I got Sam,” Kevin reassures. 

“You have, haven’t you?” His mom averts her gaze to the floral pattern on the couch, furrowing her brows like she’s hunting for Waldo himself in the leaves and vines.

Awesome- Kevin’s thinking about Waldo again; give it a week and he’ll be seeing the little creep everywhere he looks. Sam loves that  _ Where’s Waldo  _ book to the point of obsession, and Kevin knows the kid’s got skill for locating the sneaky candy-cane brat. Unlike his son, Kevin once stared at a page for an hour without finding anything.

Carol flicks her eyes back to him, and Kevin refocuses. “You really have become so incredibly mature, Kevin,” she says.

“Was I not before?”

“No.” She laughs. “And even now, I have my doubts. But things have changed, there’s no denying that. It’s like watching my little boy grow up all over again.”

“After you’d given up all hope of me growing up at all, right?”

“Right!” Her smile distorts almost as soon as it quirks into existence; it shivers to pieces until she bites down on one lip to hide how it trembles. “How is he, then? How’s Sam?”

“He’s Sam,” Kevin shrugs. Right now, Sam is doing great. Amazing. He’s looking for Waldo and running around like a nuclear bomb, every so often exploding with laughter that sounds like shrieking- laughter like Sam never laughed in his life before Kevin and needs to compensate himself for that lack as soon as possible.

And then the kid falls apart in wailing night terrors at the most unholy hours of the morning. Kevin isn’t allowed to touch him when the episodes happen, because Sam spazzes out, sometimes jumps back into the wall.

He’s scared of rats and spiders, thinks they live under his bed.

Some days, he flat-out refuses to eat.

One step forward, two steps back. Kevin thinks it over, nods decisively. “Sam is coping.”

“That’s good to hear.”

He knows his mom is worried out of her mind. She and Mac are getting old, the cost of living in California are gradually bypassing the limits of their budget; for all that Kevin’s offered to support his parents’ needs, all Carol wants is to find a retirement home out of state where she can settle down and take care of her husband. 

The only problem is Sam.

Kevin can’t take him to work, can’t bring himself to trust the kid and his anxiety to a random caretaker…

“He’s a lovely boy,” Carol compliments.

“Yep. He’s adorable as all-”

“Don’t curse, Kev, for the last time.”

  
  


It takes a few months for Carol to start showing the early signs of dementia.

Kevin updates his will.

:::

"Alan? You busy?" Kevin clicks his knuckles against the doorframe to Bradley’s office.

“Yes,” Alan replies. “Come in.” 

“How’s it hanging?”

“It’s… hanging just fine, Kevin.” Alan stabs out another line of code on his keyboard, movements methodical but sleep-deprived.

“C’mon, man, you aren’t trying to go without coffee again, are you?” Alan’s desk is cluttered- neat-cluttered, but cluttered nonetheless- with ordered piles of paper sorted by importance; tall stacks lean against shorter stacks for dear life. In all the mess, Kevin’s friend always leaves a space empty and available for a cup of coffee, usually something small and packed full of caffeine. 

There’s nothing in that space today.

“It’s addictive,” Alan explains.

What it  _ is  _ is Kevin’s last line of defense against the righteous irritation of one Dr. Bradley. Coffee saves Alan’s life, and when Kevin sees a cup of it nestled between documents on Alan’s desk- like a tall, cylindrical white flag for peace- he knows his own life has been saved, as well.

“Yeah, it’s addictive,” he agrees, “but I was counting on it to keep you from getting all snappy at me today.”

“Kevin, I will end you.”

This is how he knows Alan is serious: the words aren’t said with any detectable anger or frustration. Alan isn’t growling or snarking at him; he doesn’t even spare Kevin a glance. The statement remains completely cool and passive throughout, phrased like Alan’s suggesting the next, logical course of action of ENCOM to take in software development. It means that Alan’s put the impressive whole of his mental ability into deliberating on the idea of killing Kevin… And the impressive whole of his mental ability has agreed that homicide is, in fact, a sensible option that can and will be carried out with all of Alan’s responsible timeliness.

“Sure, man-” Show  _ no  _ fear. “But can I ask you something first? It’s a serious question; listen.”

Alan spins his chair around, tips back into it.

“Awesome. You know my parents are moving to a retirement home in Oregon soon. I had to change my will, because if something happens to me…”

“Sam needs a guardian, and your parents are no longer suitable.”  The statement feels like whiplash against Kevin’s hesitance.

“Yeah, that’s it. You’re quick.” 

“You keep me on the team for a reason, Flynn.”

“Guess so,” he acknowledges. “Will you do it?”

Alan bumps his glasses further up on his nose, sliding a finger underneath the rims to wipe at the corners of his eyes. He’s stalling. “Kevin, hear me out…”

“That’s a ‘no’.”

“It’s a tentative ‘no,’ but I’ve got a reason for it. Listen. You know Lora and Jet moved out of state. And I told you why-”

“Lora has her own career in Washington, it’s highly experimental and not highly lucrative, so you have to work to support Jet,” Kevin recites. “And COO is a very demanding position in the company.”

“Exactly. I live alone in an apartment, Kevin, and I’m gone for most of the day. I’m not the best choice for a guardian.” 

Kevin thinks the truth of the matter hurts Bradley at least as much as it concerns Kevin himself. 

“I’d say he could stay with Lora,” Alan continues. “She’d be more than willing. But is it really healthy for Sam to be moved out of his house, transferred across a few states, and left with a woman and another kid who he’s never met?”

“No, that makes sense,” Kevin says, heaving a sigh. “What if I have no other options?”

“Then I’ll accept. Are you sure there’s no one?”

There’s Rich Mackey. A man who, even before meeting Kevin’s kid, had Sam’s best interests in mind, helped Kevin pick a therapist, and now comes over for dinner some weekends.

He runs the idea by Alan. “How about Rich?”

“Mackey?” Faint distaste tightens Alan’s face. “If you trust him.”

“I do. I think- I think I’ll ask him.”

“You do that, Kevin.” Alan offers him a smile, all soft edges, and if a solemn topic of conversation is all it takes to disarm an un-caffeinated Alan, Kevin is coming to work tomorrow prepared. “I’m honored that you asked me, though.”

“Anytime, man.”

“If anything ever does happen to you,” Alan promises, “As his guardian or not, I’ll do everything in my power to take care of Sam. I want you to know that.”

“I have no doubt,” Kevin says.

Leaving Alan’s office, Kevin takes a break against the side of the hall to breathe deep and scrub at his eyes.

:::

“Infantile amnesia.” Kevin surveys the back of the flashcard, tucking it away when he notices Sam trying to read the answer through the semi-translucent paper. “Have you read about that one?”

It’s a game they play, because Sam loves learning random facts as much as he loves tearing out the flowers in the backyard, and one of those activities is far less destructive than the other.

Today, they’re going off of Kevin’s old psych textbook from his days at Caltech.

“Infant-i-le,” Sam sounds out. “Uh- I don’t think so, dad.” He’s barely paying attention, making tick marks in pencil at the bottom of his own flashcards instead of listening to Kevin. 

“I knew I’d stump you eventually, kiddo.” Kevin reads off his card, paraphrasing- “Before you’re three or four years old, some… important parts of your brain, like the hippocampus, are still in development. You need your hippocampus to make memories.”

“I know that.”

“Smartypants.”

Sam reaches for a celery stick- it’s ants on a log style, covered in peanut butter and a line of raisins- and Kevin looses a mental cheer. Sam’s a weirdly picky eater; it doesn’t take much to put him off food entirely for a few days. He’s finally eating after a long week of bad sleep, and it’s awesome. 

“So,” Sam starts, dragging out the word, “I only have three or four years of memory in me, and I’m also missing three or four?”

“Something like that, buddy. Off-topic: how do you like Rich? Rich Mackey? D'you think he’s a good guy?”  He doesn’t want to explain to his kid why he needs to know about Mackey. The last thing Sam needs to stress about right now is the possibility of his dad dying on him, which Kevin does not plan to do until a very,  _ very _ distant future.

Sam hesitates, flashing Kevin a shrewd, side-eyed look that means he’s picking up on more than Kevin’s saying. “I guess so. He’s come over to dinner.”  _ You trust him, dad. _

“Good to know,” Kevin says, and drops the conversation.

“I wonder what I don’t remember…”

“What’s that, kiddo?”

Sam picks a celery string out of his front teeth. “Infantile amnesia. I wonder what happened before my brain started working. Like- what do I not remember? I don’t remember much about mom, or…”

Kevin lets the kid’s voice fade to nothing.  _ You remember enough as it is, Sam-  _ he doesn’t say that out loud, but the words sit on his tongue for a good minute before he manages to swallow them back down.

“Your turn, Sam,” he prompts.

Sam picks up one of his flashcards. “Okay, dad, define ‘norepinephrine.’” He pronounces it  _ nora-pine-phreen,  _ and Kevin chokes back a snicker before correcting him.

_“Winter kept us warm, covering_

_Earth in forgetful snow…”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _

(On the day Kevin’s memorial goes up, the sky is stained blue with the heavy summer heat.

But Sam shivers with cold.

Lora standing beside him, Alan shields Sam from the flashing cameras and the surging mobs of reporters, keeps two hands on Sam’s shoulders and feels the nervous tremors course through the kid’s body like a live wire. He loses himself to anger like he never has before- it feels _familiar,_ somehow- because this is Sam Flynn, and every nerve in Alan’s body screams ‘ _protect him, protect him, protect…’_

On the day Kevin’s memorial goes up, Alan holds Sam.

But in the end, it’s Mackey who gets to keep him.)

_“He said Marie,_

_Marie, hold on tight. And down we went."_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _


	4. The Third Problem

_“Unreal City,_  
_Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,_  
_A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,_ _  
_ I had not thought death had undone so many.”

 _\- T.S. Eliot,_ _"The Waste Land"_

Kevin’s first thought, when he confronts the MCP, goes something along the lines of ‘whoa- big lips.’ He can’t take Dillinger’s program seriously. 

He informs Tron of this, just days after Dillinger’s expulsion from ENCOM. 

“You’re a user, Flynn. Data-blind,” Tron explains, voice tight. “If you could stand before the MCP and _sense_ the same thing I did…” He trails off, the lights of his circuits guttering.

“I don’t get it. What else was there to sense?” Shaking his head, Kevin directs the question to Yori. She shrugs. 

“Tron still dreams of red. Do you understand that, Flynn?” 

“No,” Kevin admits. “Not really.”

  
:::

Kevin goes alone to create the system administrator for the Grid. Walking out of the city, he feels Tron’s eyes on the back of his head, burning a warning into his skin: _Don’t mess this up, Flynn._

  
:::

Vital force is a user's power.

Kevin extends a hand into the mirror, toward the old friend he never got a chance to meet.

_(‘You’re dogged and relentless, remember?’)_

“You are CLU,” he says- and honestly? Kevin’s not just giving the program a name, he’s giving him his name _back._

“I am Clu.”

Through the mirror, Kevin teaches Clu patience, teaches him Kevin’s joy at the sight of cities, like lighthouses in the far distance, beckoning. He teaches Clu to love the frontier, to feel the push of the unknown and to push back.

“You will,” he says, “create the perfect system.”

“I will create the perfect system,” Clu agrees, and Kevin catches broad shoulders, pulling the new admin into a hug.

“Together we’re going to change the world, man.”

The mirror between them shatters.

_“There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!_

_‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _

“You work too hard, man,” Kevin chides.

Tron’s eyes slide open, but he doesn’t move from his position, reclined against the juncture between two walls.

“I’ve been looking for you for a month-”

“4.11 cycles,” Tron corrects, and Kevin thinks the program’s face twitches, but the room is too dark- lit only by Tron’s sparse circuits- for him to be sure. 

“That’s why you shouldn’t work hard. I haven’t been able to catch you to tell you the news; now you’re the last to know.” Kevin shrugs, his smile so wide it hurts. He has a son. A _son!_

“What news?” Tron asks, voice catching on a faint _growl_ rumbling deep in his chest. 

His suspicion catches completely Kevin off guard. “Nothing bad-”

Tron’s been burning hostility as fuel for far too long. Everything the security program does is polluted by it; his words sound heavy on the edges, clogged with fumes, all blending together until the only thing Kevin can hear is grey anger. Yori tells Kevin otherwise, but he’s at least ninety percent certain Tron was born with one setting: sternness, with an underlying, worn-down layer of paranoia.

 _“Nothing_ bad,” Kevin repeats, just to hammer it into Tron’s brain. “I- I have a son.”

Tron hesitates, questions, “A son?”

“Yeah, a son… offspring?” Leave it to a digital clone of Alan Bradley to make things awkward, Kevin thinks, and his smile finally falters as he bites his lip, thinking. “My spawn, my descendent-” He huffs. “Look, you know what I mean. I know you programs have your own ways to reproduce.”

“I don’t have a way.”

“Older software, huh?” Kevin raises an eyebrow and waits for a flustered reaction he knows he won’t get. “So you don’t know anything about user kids. It’s-” Oh, man, this conversation cannot be happening. 

(It only _thinks_ it’s happening.)

Kevin settles on “It’s complicated, man.” Tron nods, and Kevin takes that as his cue to continue. “Just- two users, right? You need two users to make a kid, and the kid ends up as a combination of both users. But user kids start out _yea_ big.” He measures out an approximate baby between his hands.

“Compressed?” 

“Not exactly.” Kevin chuckles. “They’re in proportion, have all the necessary… data. Kids just generate more data with time, and they-” Kevin tries to catch the loose ends of his analogy, but organic life forms aren’t easily compared to digital ones, and he’s left floundering. “They expand,” he finishes lamely. “Gradually.” 

“Tell me about your son,” Tron requests.

 _Weird._ When Kevin told Clu about Sam, the sysadmin responded with a ‘Congratulations’ and criticism on the imperfections of user reproduction, and their conversation stopped there. Kevin had thought stony indifference toward children to be a program thing; turns out, it’s probably just one of Clu’s tics.

“His name is Sam,” Kevin begins. He thinks of Sam, and how the kid tackled him goodbye, jumping right off the front porch, before Kevin left for the Grid. Sam’s bright eyes had squinted around a gap-toothed grin; his curls had been damp with sweat, his cheekbones flushed pink with sunburn. "He’s a little maniac. Loves to run around, wrestle, make a mess…” Huffing with laughter, Kevin leans back on the wall opposite Tron. Even in the dark, he can tell the other program is captivated by the description. “There are these…” Lizards. “Um- _small lifeforms_ that live outside our house, in the rocks. They’re skinny, brown in color, fit in the palm of your hand; before you ask, no, they don’t have any purpose. But Sam likes to catch them.”

“Their purpose is entertainment,” Tron insists.

“Nah, not usually.” Kevin thinks about it for a second, revises his answer. “I guess Sam _did_ technically assign them that purpose.

“Kid’s a genius, too. Just blows me clear out of the water. He has straight A’s in school-” Which means nothing to Tron- “He’s a quick learner. Extremely adaptable.”

Tron hums lowly, tipping his head back against the wall. His eyes slide shut.

“Sam is the nicest kid, on top of everything. He’s so polite, so good at making friends- man, I can’t take credit for any of that, but he makes me proud.”

“What does he look like?”

“Short. Thin. Big, dark hair, blue eyes, soft nose. He’s a handsome little dude.” 

Kevin talks about sandwiches cut diagonal, _with_ the crusts on, the 1000 page reading challenge at Sam’s school, the kid’s tendency to (‘What’s that!’) flip the chessboard whenever he’s losing, the time Kevin somehow didn’t notice the swap and Sam died laughing…

By the time Kevin runs out of words to say, the lines of Tron’s face have smoothed out, and a neat smile- just barely there- gentles the stern set of the program’s mouth. It occurs to Kevin that, after working so long and hard for the security of the Grid, Tron needed to hear about something _good._

  
:::

“What day is it?”

Disoriented, Kevin blinks through soft, yellow light, feeling dizzy with the warmth seeping through the basement window, feeling _off._ He expects to be surrounded by stripes of lurid lumination shining hard and bright against black backgrounds. His eyes see only pulpy browns, dusty greys; the colors are too faint, and the world seems empty. 

“What’s the date, what’s the date…”

He flips through his calendar, checks the clock (3:00 p.m.) in the corner, and realizes he has no idea what day it is outside the Grid at all.

  
:::

“Approximately two millicycles ago, another power failure was reported in Gallium; it lasted exactly 2.17 microcycles and did not affect any other cities…”

“What caused it?” Kevin interrupts.

Like Kevin, Clu talks with the assumption that people will listen to him. The disgruntled half-glower crumpling the sysadmin’s face is a familiar expression; Kevin sees it in mirrors, window reflections, and press photos all the time.

Tron takes advantage of Clu’s ornery silence, replies, “Unknown causes.”

“Hm,” Clu grunts. “You and I both know, Tron-”

 _“Users_ above…”

“-that these outages started after the appearance of the ISOs. Increased attacks from Gridbugs, greater susceptibility to system-wide glitches- all of the Grid’s most recent problems began _after_ the ISOs. They are a threat.”

“They’re not doing anything deliberately,” Kevin argues, and even in his own ears, his voice sounds unsteady, frail. 

“My point,” Clu insists, “stands.” And he stares at Kevin, head cocked downward in a fragmented bow. 

Kevin used to think Clu looked like him. The way it was at the beginning, most programs- Tron being one exception- had trouble telling them apart; more than that, Kevin often had trouble telling his ideas apart from Clu’s, and their minds blazed with similar fires.

Clu does his hair differently now, slicking it flat and smoothing the ends around the back of his head instead of letting them feather around his ears. He dresses himself- at Tron’s urging, Kevin thinks- in plated armor, preferring the style of a program instead of the style of a user. And his circuits exude harsh, yellow light.

The modification in color, Tron once explained, marks Clu's reinterpretation of his directives, a shift in the admin's energy that's a hundred times more subtle than his blatantly _visible_ change from white to gold.

Kevin can no longer look Clu in the eyes and know what the program is thinking. The visceral pull between them still exists, but Kevin can’t understand it anymore, and that…

 _Frightens_ him? He physically shakes the nervousness out of his head. Kevin’s uncertainty isn’t fair to Clu.

“Gridbugs, glitches,” Tron says, and every word coming out of his mouth is measured, steady. “All these problems existed long before the ISOs. We’ve dealt with setbacks before, and we will continue to deal in the future.”

Clu scoffs, mouth stretched into a hard grimace. Tron’s hand, cupped around his opposite elbow, clenches into a fist.

“This is different, Tron-”

“Enough!” Kevin slams his palm against his worktable, bites back a curse at the dull sting that prickles across his skin. “Shut up.” The two programs already have, each leveling a different _hue_ of a stubborn glare at him. “Just…” Kevin gropes for patience, for inspiration, _anything._ “Just shut up, man, come on.”

He finds in himself only irritation, the kind of deep exhaustion that makes it so easy to just walk away.

Standing here, scrubbing tension out of his face and eyes with both palms, Kevin misses how the Grid used to be. He misses when he didn’t have to administrate, when he was free to explore the Outlands and lose himself in the heady combination of a fast vehicle and his creative power as a user. He misses when he could leave Sam behind without guilt, saying, “I’m creating you a future, kiddo,” and meaning every word of that promise.

“Flynn.”

Tron’s voice is blunt, bruising. Clu’s silence is sharp. Kevin can’t decide which hurts more.

“What if Clu’s right? Forget- forget the power outages, Tron, think about the other programs _._ They hate the ISOs.” He’s never admitted it to himself before, and Kevin’s tongue shapes painful realization in his mouth, forces him to swallow. “It feels like a sign.”

“No.” 

“Tron…”

 _“No,_ Flynn. The programs in the Grid had problems long before the ISOs were created. The ISOs aren’t the source of the imperfection in the system." Tron tilts his chin toward Clu. "They only aggravated it.”

A sneer flips up the corner of Clu’s lip, and Kevin gets the sense he’s missing some exchange between the warrior and the admin…

“The Grid is isolated, and its inhabitants have never been through real hardship. They don’t know what it is to suffer, so they inflict suffering upon others. They have not learned the relief of being granted mercy and tolerance, so they do not show mercy and tolerance to others. They lack empathy.”

“What makes you any different?” Clu challenges.

“I’m older than you by thousands of cycles, Clu. I was rezzed into a system plagued by war, captivity, and corrosion like you could never process.”

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyebrows, Kevin groans. “It wasn’t that bad,” he mumbles, and ignores Tron's glare.

“Why are you talking about this now, Tron?” Clu asks. For once, the question carries no frustration that Kevin can hear- only curiosity. “You’ve always been a closed file.”

“I want you to listen to me,” Tron tells Clu. “And nothing else has worked so far.”

“You want me to trust you,” Clu muses.

 _Yes,_ Kevin thinks. He’s been working in an environment without trust, and it’s worn him down to nothing. Tron and Clu seem to exist on the verge of killing each other, and Kevin doesn’t want to find out who would win. How insane would it be for the future of an entire race- Kevin’s _miracle-_ to be decided by a brawl between two programs?

 _Zen,_ Kevin reminds himself, _gotta be zen._ He trusts both Tron and Clu, even if they don’t trust each other; he knows they’ll figure something out.

He cuts Clu off again in the middle of a sentence, having no idea what the admin was saying. “Is there anything else I need to take care of before I go to the portal?”

“There’s a riot in Sector 4,” Tron informs him.

“It’ll blow over,” Kevin replies, and he _believes_ himself as he says it. 

Tron considers his response for a second. “Anon is waiting for you outside, user,” the security program says quietly. “He’ll escort you to the portal.”

  
:::

Tron stands in the doorway. He doesn’t say a word.

Kevin can only stand the silence for a minute before his nerves get him. “What? What’s up?”

Tron opens his mouth- the program closes it, shaking his head. Tron- _Tron,_ the stone-faced hero of the Grid- is lost for words, and Kevin feels cold sweat break out under his arms.

“The Sea of Simulation,” Tron finally says, “has been corrupted.”

“How?”

“Virus.” 

“The ISOs?” Kevin asks, _begs,_ mind already storming with plans, remedies...

“Any entities inside the Sea at the time of infection were derezzed,” Tron reports, face blank, and Kevin realizes the program isn’t asking for solutions. “Sectors 3, 7, 8, and 12 have been quarantined. The virus has been contained. I need to get you to the portal.” Compared to the robotic monotone of Tron’s other words, his final statement _aches_ with repressed pain. 

“Okay,” Kevin agrees; standing up, he sways, almost falls on his face. “Okay, Tron, let’s go.”

_“‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,_

_‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?’”_

__\- T.S. Eliot,_ "The Waste Land" _


End file.
